Reflection
by MetalCloud
Summary: Harry and the girl had that moment...A shared moment between two people more identical than twins, two people from two different planes of existence – the physical manifestation of what if...'


_Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not Harry Potter, nothing. But I own the idea for the story. There we go. That's something._

_A/N: Ugh, tell me how bad this title is. Anyway, briefly, this is the result of reading too much sci-fi and wanting to deal in alternate realities. And I like the idea of girl-Harry, because I think that could have put a really interesting spin on the series, but all the ones I read are just so Mary Sue-ish…ugh again. It drives me insane. So, I'm creating my own girl-Harry with a twist. Because boy-Harry is in this too. And girl-Harry says nothing. She doesn't even get named. Oh yeah. Don't tell me I'm not different._

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Reflection

Harry loved the autumn more than any other season. Watching the leaves turned red and gold and flutter lazily down from the trees gave him an odd sense of peace. The leaves were dying, but new ones would grow back, and the dead ones would decompose and feed the earth.

It was this fascination for autumn leaves that found him where he was – standing in the park in front of the biggest oak tree. It had lost almost all its leaves now, but one or two latecomers would occasionally dance languidly away from their branch and to the ground, almost mockingly, as if to say '_we'll come down when we're ready and not a moment before._' Harry liked that, and often wished he could have that attitude towards life. Unfortunately he was still only nine, and even if he didn't live with slave-driving relatives, he doubted he'd have much say in his own schedule.

He tugged the sleeves of Dudley's old jacket over his hands, and when he looked back up again, he blinked in surprise.

There was girl standing there. She was translucent and Harry could see the skeletal tree behind her, but curiously, he felt no fear. All he felt was a peculiar sense of curiousity and…familiarity. Like he knew this girl from somewhere.

She looked a lot like him too. She was the same age and had the same untidy black hair and round glasses. She was even wearing very similar clothes to him – jeans far too large for her, and an oversized green jacket like his.

He took a few tentative steps closer, until he was right in front of the girl. She didn't seem to notice him at all, which was strange, given how his feet had crunched the crisp leaves on the grass. This thought was soon dispelled when he got a better look at her jacket. It had the same patch on the elbow that he himself had sown on when he'd first got it. The only reason he'd gotten it was _because_ it had gotten torn, and Dudley had been brought a new one. It was exactly the same patch, made of the red flannel from his oldest pair of pyjamas. It didn't just look like his jacket. It _was_ his jacket.

She had been looking in a different direction until now. She turned her head, seemingly to look for something else, and started when she caught sight of him. Harry wondered, should ghosts get scared of living people? Although…she seemed just as startled as he had been at first, as though he the ghost, as though he was the one out of place.

Then he looked into her face properly. Behind identical glasses, she had the same eyes as him: emerald green and almond shaped. But it was her forehead that his attention was drawn to. Because there, perched over her right eyebrow, was a scar.

A lightening bolt scar.

His scar.

She seemed to have noticed his scar too, because she was gaping. Harry realised his own mouth was hanging open at the same the girl realised hers was, and they snapped them shut concurrently.

After several moments of just staring at each other, Harry gathered his wits together enough to ask that all-important question:

"Who are you?"

The girl frowned and mouthed something Harry was pretty sure was "what?" He repeated himself. She merely shook her head and mouthed again.

It was then a thought struck him. Maybe, she wasn't mouthing at all. Maybe she was talking perfectly normally, and he just couldn't hear her, like she apparently couldn't hear him. Maybe she thought _he_ was mouthing too. Maybe to her, he looked like the ghost. It would certainly explain why she'd looked so startled at first.

She seemed to have realised this as well, because she just grinned helplessly and shrugged. He grinned back. If Harry had been any older he would have thought it eerie that they kept coming to the same conclusions at the same time, but as it was, he was too young for this to occur to him. At least, not when he was trying to figure out how to have a conversation with a ghost, or whatever this girl was.

She was mouthing something again. He concentrated very hard, and finally decided she was asking him his name. He mouthed it very deliberately, and she looked startled. She pointed at herself, then held up two fingers.

"You too?" he asked, forgetting she couldn't hear him. She seemed to catch the meaning though, as she nodded, pointed to herself, and began to spell out in the air _POTTER_. She had to repeat it a few times, but he got it eventually.

"Your surname's Potter?" he mouthed, and she nodded. "Wow."

Potter wasn't such an uncommon name, and if he'd met anyone else with it, he'd have merely thought it a coincidence and gone on his way. But this girl looked _exactly like him_ it seemed too much to be passed off as luck.

She was saying something else. She pointed at him, wrote the letter R in the air, pointed at herself again, then finally shrugged, as though to indicate it was a question.

_You are me?_

He thought for a moment. He knew it was impossible, of course, because he was him, and anyway, he wasn't a girl. But still…

He nodded.

_Yes_.

She nodded thoughtfully, then smiled at him. She had the same teeth as him, slightly crooked from never being taken to see a dentist.

Cautiously and oh-so-slowly, he lifted his hand. With identical wariness, his girl-self (as he was starting to think of her) copied his action. In unison, their hands raised and moved closer, but just as they were about to grasp hands…

In later years, he'd fancy he'd felt _something_. The light brush of her fingertips against his, like a feather fluttering past. But he could never be sure. He wasn't ever entirely sure if she'd ever been there at all, if she hadn't been a figment of his imagination. She'd disappeared so quickly. There hadn't been a bang, or a puff of smoke, just…nothing. Like your reflection when someone throws a pebble into a pond.

Because that's really it. For some reason, possibly the same reason that brought two versions of The-Child-That-Lived together, a stone was thrown into the water, and it caused the reflections to disappear.

But they did have that moment – a moment that has occurred only once or twice in history. A shared moment between two people more identical than twins, two people from two different planes of existence, from alternate realities – the physical manifestation of _what if…_

The Potter children didn't know it, but for a moment, just a moment, they had touched upon another world.

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_A/N: There you go. Girl-Harry not twisted and distorted into a Mary Sue. I've got to admit, I'm fairly pleased with this. I'm also considering (key word that, considering) making this longer. What do you think? Should I continue? And if I do, should I turn into a series of one-shots where Miss Potter keeps turning up in our Harry's life, or should I make it into a (dare I say it) actual story with a plot or something. Christ, that's a scary thought. Not that I'm actually opposed to it, I've just never really posted anything like that. But if I continued this, girl-Harry might actually talk. They could have a really nice conversation. We might even learn her name! Isn't that the most fun idea ever, isn't it, isn't it, huh?  
Yeah. A great love for sarcasm coupled with a lack of belief in my own abilities. Anyway. Review. Now. I want your opinions. I like reviews._


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